http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ne...14q2slides.pdf
Note: Digital Entertainment refers to their entire video game business. "Amusement", "Publication", and "Merchandizing" are the other divisions.
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http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ne...14q2slides.pdf
Note: Digital Entertainment refers to their entire video game business. "Amusement", "Publication", and "Merchandizing" are the other divisions.
No, they're not. This madness seem to have affected (almost) all Japanese devs.
Capcom recently announced the return of Breath of Fire, but it turned out the sixth instalment will be a mobile game. They're still cashing in on new revisions of Street Fighter IV, while Megaman has pretty much been left for dead. They release their poorly upscaled HD remasters on physical media in Japan, while it's digital only in the rest of the world. They teased fans that Darkstalkers series could be on its way back, released a compilation of recycled ports and blamed the fans when it failed to sell like hotcakes and then decided to not make a new game as a result. Then there's the Resident Evil series. It was recently revealed that Capcom might go bankrupt soon if they don't improve their financial situation. Their solution? More DLC! That will save the company, according to their new strategy. They didn't learn anything from the on-disc DLC controversy either, it seems.
Sega doesn't even release half of its games outside of Japan. It was sad enough to see Valkyria Chornicles going portable only, but even more sad to see the third instalment being exclusive to Japan. The Shining series is somehow still alive, but it doesn't seem to be a top priority series and it's Japan only now as well. They recently made it very clear that the west can forget about the Yakuza series, because they no longer see any profit in releasing it here. But hey, at least we got the gazillion bad Sonic games they made in the past 20 years. They're also fond of mobile games.
Konami is all about milking Metal Gear Solid. As talented as he is, Hideo Kojima doesn't know when to stop. He said that the fourth game would be the last one. Turns out he lied. Or rather, he just can't let go and move on to something else. He said he'd consider reviving Zone of the Enders, so we got a HD remaster compilation but not much else. And if it's not Metal Gear Solid, Konami is trying to push God of W... I mean Castlevania on us. Silent Hill? Pfft. Konami seems eager to beat Capcom at making survival horror games that are not survival horror.
Nintendo doesn't know what they're doing any more. Wii U is a major flop and they seem be clueless about how to save it. Sure, the 3DS is doing well but mostly thanks to a big third party support. But they recently announced that instead of competing with smartphones they will try to integrate mobile connectivity with the 3DS. Brilliant, huh? Oh, and all of their 3DS bundles now come with the game it's supposed to be bundled with pre-installed, no physical copy.
Square Enix loves mobile gaming. It's all they ever talk about these days. They let franchises like Front Mission get raped and the only real games they produce these days are either Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts. And most of their spin-offs and mobile games are also tied to these two franchises. The 3rd Birthday was supposed to test the waters for Aya Breya's return. I guess that's not happening. When the company presented a major financial loss the other year they blamed it on Eidos, even though Tomb Raider was both critically acclaimed and sold pretty well!
The only major Japanese company that really stands out is Namco Bandai. They have successfully created Free-2-Play variants of Tekken and SoulCalibur as a gateway for the real games in said series. Tekken is not only the most successful fighting game franchise ever, but its fans are still being well fed so to speak. All DLC characters created for Tekken Tag Tournament were free of charge. Harada, producer of the series, genuinely cares about its fans. He was also the reason why they brought the obscure Project X Zone to the west, after Tekken fans had been begging him for it via Twitter. Then we have the Tales-series, which is slowly but surely finally making its way here. After having been lurking in the background for many years, with at least half of the games being Japan only, series producer Baba seems to be very eager to capitalise on the lack of good traditional JRPG's since Final Fantasy, while still a good series, have moved on to become a different beast. They also make very smart decisions as a publisher. Do they engage in the silly smartphone wars? A little bit, but it's never at the expense of their flagship games!
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